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Roopal Shah

Roopal Shah

Vice President Product Marketing at Guidewire Software

Fremont, California

Content

Is there a framework for creating good sales enablement decks for new B2B products or training new sales rep on your product?

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 6y

I'm a big fan of Nancy Duarte's work and her book Resonate. It speaks a lot to what a good narrative should be for any presentation.   With that said, Enablement is a lot about teaching - so how you present to a customer is not necessarily how you present to a seller. For sellers, I put my teacher hat on and really think about what is it that they want to know about and how do I make the content engaging and interactive enough, that they don't fall asleep.   So not quite a framework, but hopeful ...Read More

4,201 Views

How do you keep competitive, personas, and market research info up-to-date and moving from product marketing to sales materials?

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 6y

Your CMS (content management system) should have some sort of archiving parameters in place that should remind the PMM team when things get stale. With that said, all the reminders in the world won't matter if people ignore them, so I recommend you also have a "librarian" of sorts manage your content site - whether it's in a sales portal or in another tool, someone who is in charge of managing the site, tracking metrics, and also monitoring / organizing PMM when content needs to be refreshed/arc ...Read More

3,719 Views

If you were implementing a B2B Marketing and Sales Enablement program, what are the first 5 assets you would create?

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 6y

Good question - to have to pick is tough but if I must, here are the main things I think every sales rep needs in their bag to be successful: 

(1) First Call Deck / Pitch Deck 

(2) Competitive Battlecard(s) (including how to place traps / how to arm against competitor's traps - shields/swords type of thing)

(3) Tough Q&A Log with really hard questions that a likely customer is to ask

(4) Value Map(s) 

(5) Customer Stories

3,569 Views

How do you enable sales reps to sell higher priced packages vs your lower priced offerings?

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 6y

Value selling is a really tool you can have in your arsenal. I would do a few things here if you're focused on having them shift to higher selling things. (1) Articulate Value - what is the customer getting for paying more? What are the benefits they would gain with this?   (2) Teach them to place competitive traps - what are questions they could be asking their prospects to place some FUD in their minds? I have done things like "below the iceberg" documents for AEs which teach them all the thin ...Read More

2,416 Views

How do you develop a sales enablement roadmap?

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 6y

I love Agile practices for this...my teams have always followed a process of Intake prioritization, and constant backlog grooming to feed a roadmap.

A roadmap typically is a combination of the absolute must haves (e.g. events like SKO or infratsructure projects like getting an LMS in place or what not), and should haves (e.g. key strategic goals, new product launches requiring enablement, etc.) and some white space for all those things you can't possibly plan in fast growth companies. 

2,289 Views

What are your biggest challenges in enabling global sales teams, and how do you overcome them?

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 6y

My biggest challenge is working with all the other groups vying for seller attention and helping them approach it with empathy and working for the greater good, versus what they think is best. But the responsibility here isn't all on them - enablement has a responsibilty to also present the full list of requests and pull cross functional groups together to prioritize them together. 

2,196 Views

What advice do you have for new grads looking to go into product marketing?

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 5y

(1) Learn as much as you can about the product and do your research - it's really easy these days to learn the competitive differentiators of your products, read analyst reports, what customers say, how they market, etc.  (2) Be useful and humble - if you're looking for an entry level position - be open to learning and be useful - be willing to go the extra mile to add value - whether it's editing a slide deck or reviewing copy. Anything you can do to add value for your manager.  (3) Talk to you ...Read More

1,987 Views

How does your company define the difference between Marketing and Product Marketing teams and how do the responsibilities differ?

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 8y

For us the Corp Marketing team is accountable for brand, demand generation, creative, and communication (PR/AR/etc.) along with execution of programs (e.g. project management on campaigns or tradeshow/event work). The content however comes from Product Marketing to deliver in these programs and events.  

1,978 Views

For a product marketer who only spends a portion of their time working on sales enablement with little face-to-face time with sales, what's the best way to get buy in from a large sales team?

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 6y

Work with your enablement team! And like with a lot of things these days, you're competiting for their attention - why should they listen to you? What's in it for them as sellers? What do they get if they listen to you on this topic? 

Also, work with sales leadership and have some street cred under your belt - shadow deals, visit customers, go along on ride alongs, and really build those relationships and empathy that will allow them to trust you and want to make time for your ideas and pitches.

1,895 Views

How do you balance sales enablement needs that you KNOW will move the needle (persona training, objection response, pitch deck) vs sales enablement requests that are transactional (e.g. "one-sheet" on a feature or internal policy)

Roopal Shah
Roopal Shah

Guidewire Software Vice President Product Marketing • 6y

Balance is always tricky. At the end of the day, it's about getting others to understand why you think this is important versus over the stuff and also understanding that bandwidth - whether it's yours as the content creator or the seller's as the content consumer - is finite, so prioritization is key. 

 

AEs are coin operated a lot, so start with the "what's in it for me?" answer for them and that should help with the pitch. 

1,811 Views
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